Evidence Procedures

In NLP, one of the central Metamodel questions is, “How do you know?” An honest answer to the question provides information about a person’s “model of the world,” which is essentially a “reality strategy”—the way people decide what’s real. In most cases, what we think of as “real” is more accurately a “belief,” in some cases with very little in the way of supporting evidence. Most beliefs begin, of course, with some evidence in the external environment. Through the natural processes of deletion, distortion, and generalization, beliefs that have a logical beginning can become increasingly distorted over time. One of . . . → Read More: Evidence Procedures

Global, Specific, and More

One of the metaprograms of NLP, the “Scope Metaprogram,” is about the tendency of individuals to prefer a “Global” or a “Specific” perspective. At least theoretically, those with a Global preference focus on the “Big Picture” or the “End Result,” while those with a Specific perspective are more concerned with the details, especially with the first step. Some tasks, such as completing a jigsaw puzzle, are best accomplished by using one approach, while others seem to require the Big Picture approach encapsulated with Covey’s “habit” of “Beginning with the End in Mind.”

I suspect that experienced jigsaw puzzlers could . . . → Read More: Global, Specific, and More

Coping with Complexity

In a recent article, Spencer Critchley discussed the difficulties a number of “conservative” Republicans are having coping with the complexities of the modern world. The part of his essay that caught my attention is the following:

The truth, as usual, is complex. But complexity is what the right-wing historical revisionists don’t like. They prefer to reduce it to binary choices of right-wrong, good-evil. We see this on the extreme left, too, where some argue that because the founders did not extend full rights to slaves, women or Native-Americans, they were no better than any other white, male oppressors. For . . . → Read More: Coping with Complexity